


i'm so far gone and you are too

by blaiseborn



Series: i knew when i got one right [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Minor Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Minor Julie Molina/Nick, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blaiseborn/pseuds/blaiseborn
Summary: Like a fool, Luke keeps going back to Julie whenever she calls, whenever she and Nick aren't a thing anymore. It's been like this for two years - for two long years, he's been telling himself that it doesn't mean anything, that it doesn't hurt when he finds out she's back with the blond mere weeks, days after she was with him. Maybe he would have believed that, if he wasn't in love with her. If he couldn’t see how well they fit together, two pieces of a broken puzzle.There is something about tonight that feels different. Maybe this time, it's the truth that he believes rather than the lies he keeps telling himself.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Series: i knew when i got one right [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156241
Comments: 19
Kudos: 190





	i'm so far gone and you are too

Luke is at the party when her text comes through. His phone buzzes and he takes it out of his pocket, doing a double take: **Pick me up at Danforth St?**

She phrases it as a question, but both of them know it’s a full stop – an order, almost, or an offer that’s almost a promise. He texts back a positive response and looks around, trying to find his friends so they know he didn’t just ditch them. He sees Bobby making out with some girl in the back of the room, hands lost somewhere in the tangle of bodies. Reggie is almost the same, except his mouth is still attached to him and him only, but judging from the hungry looks he and the girl he’s dancing with are exchanging, it’s not bound to stay like that for too long.

Alex is the only one near him. He’s on the couch, a little further away, chatting to his boyfriend with a hand squeezing Willie’s thigh, moving in gentle circles. 

Luke calls his name. When the blond averts his gaze from the boy half on his lap, Alex shakes his head. “Don’t tell me it’s her again.”

There’s no point in denying. Luke doesn’t like lying to his friends— _brothers_ —either. 

Alex heaves a sigh, watching Luke pick his jacket from the edge of the couch, pushing his hands through the sleeves. Her eyes are a little hazed, a little buzzed, but the worry in them is still clear. “She’s using you.”

“So?” 

Luke takes off the beanie, running his hand through his hair, ruffling it up a little bit. Maybe this way it won’t seem like he was bored at the party – maybe she’ll think he had a heated make out session that Bobby is having right now. Maybe it’ll make her want him more. 

Alex calls him over. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”

“It’s just sex, Alex.”

“She has a boyfriend.”

“Not when she’s with me,” he says. He doesn’t know much about her relationship with Nick, but she knows whenever she calls Luke, they’re always off. “It’s not cheating.”

“Technically.”

Luke scoffs. “ _Technically_ is enough for me.”

Next to Alex, Willie stares at Luke. His hand is around his boyfriend’s neck, and they look so loved up that it’s making Luke almost want something like that. Just almost, because it’s not what he really wants. Having someone to rely on and for them to rely on you – Luke’s not about all that. He likes his freedom. He likes no boundaries. He likes doing whatever the fuck he feels like.

“How many more times are you going to do this until it becomes too late?”

“Don’t get all profound on me, Willie,” retorts Luke, giving the boy a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.”

The couple just stares at him, the look of disagreement the same in their eyes. He feels scrutinised, so he lets them know that he wasn’t aware that he gained two dads. Alex rolls his eyes and tells him to not keep her waiting, if he’s still planning on going through with this. 

It’s his last chance to back out, but Luke isn’t known as a quitter. He isn’t known as someone with an ounce of self-restraint, either, so simple pleasures is where it’s at for him. 

The last thing he tells them is to make sure they let the other two know he won’t be joining them back at the party. Neither Alex nor Willie seems surprised by this. 

Luke gets into his car and fifteen minutes later, he’s at Danforth Street, waiting to see her pop out of a side alley. This is their thing – he pretends to not know this is Nick’s neighbourhood, and she doesn’t ask why he always shows up. 

He doesn’t know the answer to that, either. He feels like it’d be easy to find it if he let himself think about it, but it’s like he told Alex: he can look after himself. 

A figure moves in the dark. The passenger door opens a few moments later, and Julie slips into his car. 

They say nothing as Luke starts the engine and drives down the road, taking them out of there. She’s looking nice – he spotted her at the party earlier, with Flynn at her side instead of Nick, and even then figured that he might get a text at some point. The striped miniskirt is hiking up her thighs in the seat now, her denim jacket doing next to nothing to cover her bare midriff, as her top’s just a sparky tube top that looks like a signature piece from Flynn’s wardrobe. 

She reaches for the radio and switches the stations from the rock he was listening to for some blues, RnB kind of thing. Slow. Strong beat. Sensual. 

Listening to his and watching her sway her head to the beat out of the corner of his eye, hers closed, is making him almost reconsider his rule of not making the first move. 

This has always been a game in which he was merely a pawn. It started at a party, nearly two years ago, when she and Nick were just a fresh couple everybody was talking about. They argued loud enough for everybody to find get some more material on them, and Luke found himself in her way as she was storming through the house, looking for something – someone. Their eyes locked and she paused, Nick hot at her heels, before taking his hand and dragging him outside, fingers burning hot and fiery with tension unlike any Luke had ever felt. 

Or at least that’s how it went down in his head. Reality is probably closer to the fact that he was the guy she made eye contact with, he wasn’t talking to anyone, and he was just the easiest choice. 

There are times when he wonders if that was just him imagining things, or she felt the passion running a hot white when she kissed him outside, on the porch, with no one to see them. If she also felt his hands burning permanent imprints into her skin like he felt hers, and kisses leaving a trail that left marks for days to come. 

Nick never followed them outside. Luke had an inkling that things weren’t being said to him when Julie said that she and “the blonde boy” were over, but brought her to his place, anyway. 

When he heard they were back together less than a week later, he didn’t know what to think. He didn’t want to feel used, but that was all he could feel. He thought they had something that night, something that created magic when they lost themselves in each other. She didn’t seem to feel the same. 

He was a fool for answering her text a month later, asking him to pick her up. Again, she said they called it quits, and again they were together by the end of the week.

And like a fool, he keeps falling for it. 

For two years now.

Her hand slips on his thigh, thumb running in gentle circles. He glances over; she isn’t looking at him. Luke doesn’t let himself think before his hand covers hers, wrapping itself around her as if it were an extension of his own body. Her hand is a little cold, so he brings it to his lips, kisses it, and blows slightly. 

He feels her shiver; suppresses the satisfaction pooling in the pit of his stomach. 

“Do you want me to put up the heating?”

Julie shakes her head.

He doesn’t ask again, but holds her hand until it doesn’t feel as cold. His thumb is brushing the back of her palm, relishing in the ability to touch her without hiding – even if he still is, to some extent. 

(He’ll never be free, not with her. Their story isn’t the one with a happy ending.)

They drive through the sleeping Los Angeles, occasionally passing cars here and there, but it’s just the two of them, and the stars above them that they can’t even see. 

Luke takes her to a place where they can see them. It’s a little out of town, a short drive away from where he’d just picked her up from, and they still don’t talk when he turns off the engine, but lets the music play. They’re parked on a hill, overlooking a small part of the city. He can see the stars through the windshield – he’d go out, with her, but he thinks she’d freeze. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. 

She glances at him and it’s a little angry, almost. Him asking this isn’t complying to the undisclosed agreement they have – the less they know about each other, the better. 

It’s just sex.

He wants to apologise, but stops himself at the last moment. Just looks away, despite the fact that he’s still holding her hand in his.

Julie sighs, and he feels her hand relax a little. “It keeps happening,” she says, softly – it sounds as if even she is surprised by her admission. “The arguments. They just go on and on and on. I don’t really want to talk about this.”

“We don’t have to. I’m sorry I asked.”

“No, it’s…” She leans her head on the headrest, looking at him with that look in her eyes that’s usually too soft for him – he’s used to her pupils being blown, hungry, seeking attention without shame. “You deserve to know. Things are bad, and sometimes I just want to forget that he even exists.”

“And that’s where I come in,” he says, voice only a little bit sour.

“Yeah,” she replies, a little breathy; the smile on her face is hiding a note of sadness. “You’re pretty good at that.”

She’ll never be his. He knows that, looking at her now, but she’ll never be Nick’s, either – a star like Julie cannot be tamed easily. She’s like a flame, evading everything being thrown at her, going her own way no matter what. 

He doesn’t like to think about her as a belonging. Sometimes he does, just to remind himself that he shouldn’t feel like he belongs to her, either. It doesn’t always work, but it’s not something he’d ever admit. 

Luke reaches for her cheek, tucking a strand behind her ear. His palm rests on her cheek and she leans into it, letting her eyes flutter. Moments like these are when Luke wonders if it maybe isn’t just sex, regardless of how they make it seem – if maybe there’s a reason why they fit like two pieces of a broken puzzle. 

He leans forward and hovers in front of her lips for a beat, then closes the distance. 

He loves kissing her. It’s like pushing a spoon into a jar of honey, all smooth and graceful, always just as natural as breathing itself. Their bodies move in sync until it’s his hands sliding underneath her jacket, feeling the shivers on her skin through every bit of his spread palms, pulling her just a little bit closer into himself. 

When they stop, they’re out of breath, and the stars aren’t visible through the mist on the car windows. Every time, it’s as if Luke forgets how overwhelming in the best way possible it is to kiss her – to feel her pressed against him, lips moving along in a secret language, secret rhythm. Kissing her is the only thing better than making music. 

(It’s only fair, then, that both of these things are something the world is always consistently trying to tear away from him.)

Her eyes flutter open, and she smiles as she presses a chaste kiss to his lips. “Your place?”

“You sure?”

Julie just nods. He kisses her again, lets himself spend a moment with his face buried in the mess of her hair, before he presses a kiss right below her jawline, where she knows she loves it the most. She shivers at the sensation, letting out the tiniest of gasps – he knows her body better than his own. He can only hope that Nick makes her half as satisfied as he does, but maybe that’s the reason why she keeps coming back to Luke, because Nick can’t. 

It’s the only win he gets and it’s the one he’ll take with pride. 

For the entirety of the ride, her hand’s on his thigh, wrapped in his. She hums along to the music coming from the radio and he makes the drive a little longer, just to be able to hear that for a few minutes more. He loves listening to her sing, even if it’s the quietest sound in the world – she has the voice of an angel. 

(He likes it even better when it’s his name coming from her lips, half in a gasp, half in a melody soaked in pleasure.)

His flat is in the shoddy part of the same neighbourhood where the party took place. They pass the house where he figures Alex and WIllie and Reggie and Bobby probably still are, and maybe even Flynn, too, but they don’t stop there. A few blocks away is where he pulls up, quietly, in the garage underneath his building. 

He holds her hand as he takes her upstairs, despite the fact that by now, she could make it there all on her own without a problem. He never let himself count how many times nights like these occurred, but the number’s been in the double digits for a while now. 

Her lips are on his even before he gets to unlock the door, her back pressed against it. They’re clumsy when they enter, her taking off her shoes as he locks them in, and it’s less than a moment that they spend apart. They crash against one another like high waves against the shore – needy and aching all at once. Clothes on the floor are marking their passing from the entrance to his bed, like Hansel and Gretel with their doomed breadcrumbs. 

They never think about what’s happening. They never talk because they read each other like their favourite books, and by now, he knows how to make satisfy her quickly, or keep it going until she’s screaming his name until she is wrapped around him, passionate enough to fool her into loving her. 

(That’s the only times he admits to himself – when he isn’t thinking clearly, when she is all he can see, hear, feel, taste. When she is everything and he is nothing, giving her his everything.)

They fall asleep with their limbs tangled, and they wake up the same way. His arms are wrapped around her, pulling her naked form over his chest. It’s a sensation that is so familiar, yet the intimacy astonishes him every time. Julie isn’t the only person he’s had sex in the last two years, but she’s the only one he’s _slept_ with – the only one whose hair he detangles in the morning, whose back are canvas for his fingers to draw across. 

He doesn’t let himself think about Nick, or give himself false hope, because he knows Julie will never be either of theirs. They can’t tame her. At least Luke isn’t the one trying. 

For a moment, he lets himself pretend that this isn’t where their story ends. That he’ll wake up, completely, and make her breakfast in bed. That she’ll take it with a smile, put one of his t-shirts or hoodies on, and spend the day kissing him on the couch, on the bed, on the counter, wherever they feel like it. That she’ll crawl back into his bed when the night ends, too, and that they’ll be able to do what they always do, just without guilt. Without the looming presence of a blond boy that Luke knows she will eventually get back to, because she always does. 

That’s how the story goes. 

He kisses her forehead and she stirs against him, mumbling something. He feels his cheeks flush, feeling the vibrations of her voice on his skin – feeling her heartbeat match his own. 

Willie’s question pops up in his mind: _how many more times are you going to do this until it becomes too late?_

He knows that he’s passed the point of _too late_ far too long ago to be strong enough to admit it. If stolen moments where he pretends things are different is all he is going to get, he’ll take it. In front of his friends, he can pretend he’s stronger than he really was. If it was someone else, maybe he’d last. Maybe he wouldn’t be having trouble with making it be _just sex,_ at all.

But it’s Julie, and it’s Julie, and he can’t not think about how well they fit together, and it’s _Julie._

Luke gets out of bed at that point, careful not to wake her. He can’t keep torturing himself, and he wants to take a shower, brush his teeth, make her the pancakes he knows she loves. 

He puts them in the over when they’re done, to keep them warm until she’s up and ready to eat them. It’s still very early and he’s glad he didn’t drink at all last night, because he would’ve been suffering through a headache, instead of playing gentle notes on the guitar next to the bed, watching her, wishing things were different. 

He left one of his hoodies on the bed, alongside a pair of sweatpants. Sometimes she takes them, sometimes she doesn’t. He never gets them back. Maybe she throws it out, maybe she keeps them hidden in the back of her wardrobe, taking them out and wearing them when things with Nick are bad, or she just misses him. 

He thinks she misses him, sometimes. Or, at least, it’s easier to think that she feels the same for him as he does for her.

Julie stirs, and there’s a light chuckle coming from her. “Serenading me in the morning?”

“Just practicing,” he says. “I’ve got a gig tonight, at the Orpheum.”

“Oh.” She opens one of her eyes, a soft smile gracing her features. “That’s a big deal.”

“Mhm.”

He keeps playing, but it’s not practice for his band’s show, because they don’t do ballads. They do punk-rock, they rebel against the government, they are the revolution singing in the rain. This is just Luke – the part of him that only exists around her. 

She moves on the bed and watches him, her face unreadable. “I might come and see you, then.”

Luke’s hands miss a note, and then he catches himself again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes are intense when he catches her gaze – the same softness from last night, except it’s different, except there’s determination to it, except it’s making his heart skip a beat. “I think I want to.”

“You’re always welcome.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Julie’s eyes fall on the clothes he’d prepared for her. She lets out a feathery laugh, the messy curls bouncing around her shoulders as they shake. “I’m not going to give these back.”

“Figures,” he says, giving her a knowing smile. 

“Luke…” 

“I know,” he says. He tries to prevent from the notes he’s playing from turning sombre, but it’s difficult. He can keep his face and body sharp – his music always tells the truth.

Julie pulls her hair back before letting it fall again; she seems as lost as he feels. 

“I can’t make promises I can’t keep,” she says quietly. 

“I know.”

“And I don’t want to hurt you.” Her eyes are a little teary, now, and her voice breaks when she calls his name again. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, “I do.”

There’s a moment that would’ve been heavy, wordless, overbearing, if it wasn’t for Luke’s fingers still strumming the strings, moving along the frets on the neck of the guitar, expressing everything that words can’t cover. 

She pulls his hoodie over her head and slips into his sweatpants. It’s all too big on her, and she has to roll up the bottom of the sweatpants, but Luke things she looks the most gorgeous he’s even seen her – like this, in the hoodie that has his band’s name printed on the front. 

Julie moves on the bed until she’s sitting in front of him, hand gentle on his knee. “I don’t know why I keep going back to him. It’s like a broken record, and I go back every single time.”

“Happens,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

Things between them feel different. If he—they—ever fooled themselves into thinking this was just sex, it all fell through at a moment which Luke can’t pinpoint, but he knows it happened. He can hear what she’s telling him without saying it. 

_I don’t know why I go back to him when I could be with you_. 

He doesn’t know what comes over him, but his mind forms a response to it, and it falls from his lips before he gets to catch it. “You can always just stay here. With me.” He plays a few more notes, forcing a smile on his face, preparing for the rejection. “There’s pancakes.”

Julie chuckles, but it’s a sad sound, and her head falls. When she looks back at him, he sees the shimmer of tears on her cheek. He wants nothing more than to wipe them, kiss them away, hold her until she knows that he’s wanted her, wants her, will always want her, will always reserve a space for her in his heart.

“I don’t think I deserve you, Luke.”

He stops playing. His hand finds her and he kisses it, again, like he always does. “We both know what we’re doing. Even if you’re not with him when we’re together, we both know this is wrong. I’m just as at fault as you are.”

Julie shakes and he puts the guitar away, pulling her close until his arms are wrapped around her and she is small against his chest, smelling like his aftershave and her perfume. He kisses the crown of her head. 

“Come to the concert tonight,” he whispers. “Don’t go back to him. Just… Give me a chance.”

_I can make you happy._

She buries her head in his chest and gives him a promise, one that he holds dear to his heart. They stay like this for a while – she cries, for the first time, and he thinks it might be the first time that she’s letting herself allow to feel for herself, to accept the way things are. 

He brings her pancakes in bed. She laughs, then, and they devour them within minutes. He picks up his guitar again and she sings along, this time, and he thinks that maybe there is a universe that cares about him, and it decided to give him happiness, as fleeting as it may be. 

Julie leaves his flat a couple of hours later, when he drives her to the place where she, Flynn, and their friend Carrie are staying. She kisses his cheek before she leaves the car, and his heart is crushed with the fear of him being a fool again, except a bigger one this time. That he won’t see her face in the crowd tonight, that tomorrow he’ll hear they’re back together, that he’ll go back to being just someone she needs when she’s angry or lonely – or worse yet, that he’ll be no one, at all. 

He doesn’t tell his bandmates about inviting her. If she doesn’t come, they’ll pity him, or rightfully call him a fool, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to withstand that alongside his heart already breaking. 

The time of the concert comes, just as they are about to get on the stage, and her face isn’t in the crowd. He tells himself he’ll mourn his pride and honesty after the show – for now, he puts on a brave face, and pushes through. 

It’s halfway through their set list, when they’re all taking a breather and Reggie is giving the audience a nice, impromptu speech, that he spots her. One of the purple stage light shines on her and lights her up like an angel descended from the heavens – she smiles at him, as if saying _I know you thought I wouldn’t come_ , and it takes everything he’s got not to rush through the crowd and kiss her, right then and there, in front of everybody. 

He’s got more energy for the rest of the set than he’s ever had. It’s the best concert they’ve ever done, and the critics and label representatives who come to talk to them after the show say agree with that. 

She’s waiting for him, sharing a drink with Flynn at the bar. He approaches her once all the business talk is over, and the boys go to get some drinks for themselves, too. 

Reggie catches him before he gets to her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

All it takes is one glance at her. “Yeah.”

“What if she gets back with Nick?”

“She won’t,” he says, surprising even himself with the confidence. “Not this time.”

“Okay,” relents Reggie, even if reluctantly, then pats him on the back with an encouraging grin. “Go do your thing, then.”

Reggie leaves and when Luke’s eyes meet Julie’s, she’s alone. He approaches without hesitation and she plants a kiss on his cheek. “I didn’t know you were that good.”

He tucks a strand of runaway hair behind her ear, chuckling lightly. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know yet.”

“Well,” she says, stepping closer until he can feel her breath on his lips, “I’d like to find out.”

When he kisses her then and there, at the Orpheum, it’s the beginning of something – it’s as if they’ve been teetering on the edge of something great for so long, both of them fearing to let go of what they knew, of their comfort zones, until they leapt over the edge in that very moment. 

Luke’s got a good feeling about this.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find Julie's perspective _[here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29354271)_.


End file.
